1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to speech recognition and more specifically to dialect-specific speech recognition.
2. Introduction
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is a part of every-day life. People interact with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems when they call a customer service hotline, call a bank, use voice-activated name dialers, and even when they pick up a telephone call from a telemarketing automatic dialer. Modem IVR systems often allow a user to speak their entry data instead of using other input methods, such as touchtone keys or a keyboard, to enter data. When IVRs acquire user input in this way, they typically use a set of utterances or utterance components, called a grammar, representing expected inputs in order to process the information and allow the user to proceed within the IVR system. A directed dialog speech system is one specific example of an IVR system that uses grammars to recognize speech.
A grammar can consist of representations of the expected spoken utterances from a user at a specific point in an application. By knowing what grammar items are expected at a given point in an IVR call, the system or a human administrator tunes the grammars to increase the chance of understanding user speech input. The tuning often includes consideration of numerous external stimuli such as noise background and transmission media. However, callers to an IVR can speak with a wide variety of dialects. Accordingly, what is needed in the art is an improved way to recognize speech based on dialect.